A 26-year-old Saxtons River man will spend more than five years in prison after he pleaded guilty Monday to possession of what the judge called one of the largest and horrific collections of child pornography federal prosecutors had seen in Vermont.

Dylan Lester was sentenced to 65 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss.

Lester has a previous conviction for possession of child pornography when he was 17. The case was handled in state court because of his age, and he received a deferred sentence and placed on probation until 2009.

The most recent charges stem from an investigation by federal and state agents that revealed a peer-to-peer file sharing network in December 2011, and a search of the Lester home on March 27, 2012.

“When agents asked him why he resumed collecting child pornography after his first conviction, Lester explained that he ‘was good for a year and half or so, but that it was like smoking a cigarette, you can quit, but once you start again, and get back into it, you can’t stop.’”

According to the sentencing memorandum on file with the case, one of the files on Lester’s computer was 101 minutes long of child sexual abuse. Law enforcement also found three boxes in Lester’s bedroom, decorated with anime pictures of naked young girls, age 11, age 7, and one labeled “Baby Sister.”

Under terms of the sentencing in U.S. District Court in Rutland by Reiss, Lester also will face 10 years of supervised release.

According to a release from the U.S. attorney’s office, Reiss said that Lester’s child pornography collection included 15,000 different child pornography files on his computer.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Lester said he would have been “cured” of his interest in child pornography if he had spent one month in prison on his original case.

According to a psycho-sexual evaluation of Lester, he is at high danger of re-offending and a moderate risk of sexually abusing children himself. Lester downplayed the seriousness of his collection of child pornography, saying he had not participated in any of the abuse.

Lester also told law enforcement agents that he was simply “collecting” child pornography, but not sharing it on the Internet, but his computer activity showed otherwise.

But the sentencing memo including lengthy statements from some of the children in the videos, saying the abuse haunted them and affected them daily.

“Lester’s conduct in seeking out and amassing a huge cache of child sexual abuse images also stoked the market for their continued production,” the federal prosecutors stated in the memo. “He thus shares responsibility for the child sexual abuse perpetrated in the creation of the child pornography.”